Essays in Education and Labor Economics.

Labor Economics;Education;Economics;Business;Economics

Ranchhod, VimalMcCrary, Justin Reed ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Labor Economics;    Education;    Economics;    Business;    Economics;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/57598/vranchho_1.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

The first chapter of the dissertation investigates howpoor households in developing countries respond to adverse incomedevelopments. I use nationally representative longitudinal data toinvestigate behavioral responses to the loss of an Old Age Pensionerin South Africa. I find that household composition adjusts, with anoutflow of school aged children and an inflow of middle-aged femalesand older adults. The household, on aggregate, also has more peopleemployed. Conditional on compositional stability within demographicgroups, I find large and significant increases in both labor supplyand employment. Policy makers might be concerned with the impact ofcash transfers on the labor supply of non-recipients.The second chapter examines the effect of the Old Age Pension onretirement behavior of elderly South Africans. I make use of therules on age eligibility to measure changes in various dimensions oflabor supply that occur when people reach the pensionable age. Ifind significant decreases in employment rates and labor supply.Those who remain employed beyond the pensionable age are more likelyto work in jobs with flexible hours of work, and work even fewerhours than people in similar jobs who are not pension age-eligible.The final chapter investigates the impact of changes in theprobability of being admitted into a selective college on students;;SAT score sending behavior. We capture this using a student;;s class rank combined with the Texas Top Ten PercentRule. In response to dwindling minority enrollment rates, the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M CollegeStation embarked on targeted recruitment programs at previouslyunder-represented high schools. We evaluate the effectiveness ofthese programs using individual level SAT data. We find that scoresending is affected by the legal change, and that both targeted recruitment programs were successful in attracting scores. In each case, the effects weremanifest most strongly amongst the students in the top decile of theclass. This suggests that students from poor schools face multiple barriers toobtaining postsecondary schooling at selective colleges.